Has Facebook killed BlackBerry?

I have written about the slow demise of BlackBerry for years. Little by little, piece by piece, the once dominant smart phone fell apart in a surprisingly slow death.

Facebook may have finally killed off BlackBerry

To be honest, I thought that the smart phone manufacturer would have hung it up some time ago. But much like its stubbornness to adapt to the changing smartphone market, it still is too stubborn to see the writing on the wall that its time has passed.

On the heels of the announcement that WhatsApp, which is incidentally also owned by Facebook, will cease to be supported for Blackberry OS, Facebook announced yesterday that it too will no longer support its own app in the BlackBerry environment.

So has an app actually killed a smart phone manufacturer?

Knowing this company, the short answer is no. It is too stubborn to not think it has a future. It developed a phone that runs Android, for goodness sakes. Forget the fact that it is a sliding phone with a real keyboard, which I am sure is a big hit with all the kids.

The time has long passed for BlackBerry.

Let’s be real here, Facebook has one billion users. I am not saying that the sun rises and sets with Facebook. But when an app as ubiquitous as Facebook can no longer be run on a device, what does that say about the device itself? Facebook sees no future in BlackBerry and, the last time I checked, it has some pretty smart people there. So why should we see a future in the phone either?

Facebook may not have killed BlackBerry, but I think it cut the final artery. Facebook just put up a switching barrier for anyone thinking of buying the phone, one too high for just about everyone to overcome.

No one new to the smart phone market – like teenagers, for example – could even consider using BlackBerry. It really feels like its current user base is about all it has left. And a cracked screen, broken keyboard, or a drop in the toilet is about all that stands between BlackBerry and its final death.

Has Facebook killed BlackBerry? was last modified: March 23rd, 2016 by Tom Dougherty